The latest news and commentary on science, engineering and technology

Avast ye scurvy landlubbers! Our timbers were well and truly shivered earlier this week by the announcement that a shipwreck discovered off the north coast of Haiti could be that of the Santa Maria, the very ship Christopher Columbus sailed for his first expedition to find the New World.

The wreck is the right length. Stones used as ballast match the Spanish quarry known to have supplied Columbus’ other ships. A cannon found onboard is of 15th century-design. It’s looking good for Coumbus fans.

Ancient shipwrecks are exciting discoveries. Like dinosaur bones, they make history come alive and tell a story that previously existed only on paper, dramatically rendering a legend in three-dimensions in the modern world. Our ocean floors are undoubtedly littered with the wrecks of hundreds of ships, and the bones of thousands of men, the sea bed withholding deathly secrets that may never be told.

E&T magazine

Graphene is a single atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice. Although it was only isolated for the first time in Nobel-prize winning work by Manchester physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2004, researchers all over the world are now working on countless applications for the material, which is an effective conductor of heat and […]

Companies including including Greenpeace, WWF and the Marine Conservation Society have taken over Westminster Tube station with posters on the walls and ticket gates extolling the virtues of offshore wind power, which is now half the price it was just two years ago. ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Thick of It’ actor Peter Capaldi was there to launch the campaign and said […]

Anyone who has ever seen the rows of containers full of compacted recyclables waiting to be shipped off to China from Southampton and other UK ports will have concluded that there is nowhere near enough capacity to process all this material at home. While the practice of sending the packaging we discard on a sea journey of thousands of miles has long been co […]

China introduced a series of strict laws in June that required local and overseas firms to submit to security checks and store user data within the country. Many businesses said that they would struggle to operate under the new regime and that vague wording of the regulations leaves foreign firms vulnerable to abstract interpretations of the rules. The new […]

The sun just about managed to emerge from behind the clouds as the ribbon was cut this morning by Claire Perry, the minister for climate change and industry. The solar facility is based on Clayhill Farm near Flitwick in Bedfordshire. “For the solar industry, Clayhill is a landmark development and paves the way for a sustainable future, where subsidies are no […]

The electric-powered Mototoks reduce emissions by replacing traditional diesel tugs and should help to improve the punctuality of its planes, the carrier said. Five of the high-tech vehicles are being used across 25 stands at Heathrow Terminal 5 and have already moved a large number of planes carrying around 100,000 customers in total. The Mototok’s electric […]

One of the main reasons that industrial customers are reluctant to move from wired to wireless is the problems associated with stability. Wireless transmission is NOT as reliable as wired transmission. However, by following certain best practices it is possible to set up a wireless network that will provide the level of reliability needed for M2M communicati […]

In July, a penguin-shaped security robot was reported to have fallen into a fountain in an office reception and “drowned”. Unable to right itself, the unwieldy robot became essentially useless and had to be rescued by its human colleagues. While robots like these have many abilities humans are not capable of – such as collecting and storing huge amounts of d […]

The earlier Curiosity rover (pictured above), which is currently roaming the surface of Mars, is equipped with a ‘ChemCam’ which is designed to capture the chemical makeup of its surroundings with a specially designed laser system. It is the most powerful laser to operate on the surface of another planet and the burst of infrared light it fires lasts only a […]

Shared mobility is gaining traction in urban India as well as in tier cities. Urban India turns to shared mobility for the sake of convenience and tier cities view it as a cost-saving option. “The interplay of technology and mobility will bring a paradigm change in the auto industry; expectedly it will intensify over the next few years and span out into mult […]